Hey Rabbi, Thanks for approving my membership... I hope I can get some answers, or a discussion of some sort

I hope you dont mind it being a tiny bit lengthy.. I want to get my thoughts out... and I hope you can spare afew minutes to read it. Thanks again!

Ok , my lack of belief, or doubts of g-ds exsistance is based on some reading I have been doing on human behaviour, the mob mentality, mass belief, mind control (tricks, but they prove a point)...

The point is that humans minds are VERY easily manipulated into a certain way of living, taking actions and even falling in love.

When I say "manipulated", I mean their upbringing, friends, family, the woman you marry, your children etc

this may sound negative, but Im just trying to say that without everthing that has happened to you in your life, you wouldnt be where you are.

I'll give some examples...

A terrorist has a kid. A child, living in a religeous extremist family of jihad terrorists, what do you think he will turn out to be?

and if he dousnt do what they say, he will be killed anyway!

He goes through severe brainwashing, that controls him to the point of, walking into a resteraunt.. and blowing up 20 people.

Was it his fault.... did he make "choices".......... or did his upbringing, his family, friends... manipulate him into doing it.

It dousnt really matter... it happend, but it goes to show how easily the human mind is manipulated.

I will use a less extreme example.

If a child is brought up in a nice cristian family, and they are a lovely family living happily... chrismas, church.. and all the rest.

Those kids wont blow people up.

Throuought the generations we have seen humans being "manipulated" into a certain way of being...

Also, just think about this for one second.

there are around 14 million jews, making a massive 3% of the population and just 0.22% of the religeous world.

What jews are saying, is that 99.78% of the people who belong to religiouns.. are WRONG!.. They are mistaken.. they dont know "the truth"...

we think they belive in something incorrect..

This further prooves how EASILY people... human beings, are manipulated into a certain way of thinking.

obviosly there will be instances of people moving from one religion to another, but thats always based on choices they made in their life, or by an outside influence or circumstance...

So if we know over 99% of people can be brought up believing in something genuinly wrong (according to us), Then wouldnt it be likely that we have also been brought up to believe something wrong.

We know mass belief exsists, we know the Mob mentality exsist (explains possible events like mount saini), we know people are easily manipulated into certain ways of thinking, doing and being...

Also if we think about one last thing, the theory of evolution... you can only see the other side of the coin, if you are willing to look and see the possibilities, there are many jews and religious people that are so totally religous ("brainwashed, manipulated") that they would never even want to hear about it....

But I think its only fair to look.

Lets say evolution was true.... We have proof of neanderthals, we have cave drawings and dinosaurs, we have fossils evolving over time, and most importantly, we have millions of species of animals, trillions of types of bacteria... and even more.

Also, the universe has been recorded now to be at least 200 Billion light years across.. But let me just put this in perspective for you.

Our sun is 93 million miles away...

1 light year is 5.88 Trillion miles!

Our universe is 200 Billion LIGHT YEARS across!

This is unbelievably big, you literally cant imagine how incredibly tiny our earth is.... Even our entire galexy is tiny in comparison.

there are suns that make our sun look like a grain of sand to the earth.

Yet here we all are, on an earth which based on geography, and science has been formed over time, always moving, shifting, and growing and dying. There are cycles everywhere, with ever slightly changes.

We know people have changed over time... thats why people look different if they are from somewhere different, chinese people dont look like english people... This is evolution over the span of 10,000 years.

In 10,000 we have gone from neanderthal to humans (homo sapiens)... what happened in the 15billion years before that.

So logic would make me think that humans developed.... slowly, and since they were starting out as neanderthals.. the were not the smartest bunch at first. Then that started to change, they evolved so to speak.

Technology, industrial eras, and everthing we have today, has been slowly invented and thought of, as the human brain has been developing.

Our history is proof of this...

So this would make sense that 2000 years ago a religioun was started by people who not only DIDNT have the thoughts of technology, a modern time, and most of all.. they didnt know the size of the galexy, the significance of a cell or what bacteria was.

However they DID still have mass belief, brainwashing, and manipulation.

Dont you think in a time like that, there is a very good reason why religions started, and of course grew to what they are today.

But remember, jews are 0.02% of all beliefs...... we say 99% is wrong... and 99% say we are wrong, and every religion says the other religions are wrong.

I mean look at all these people, that all believe in sooooo many different things...

I think everyones right about everyone else... they are wrong... and we are ALL wrong!

This has led be to think that there is no g-d at all, and religion was born from a very old time of very little education, absolutly no knowlage of the univers, science, the way things work.. even if the world was round or not!!!..... literally nothign.

There are tribes in south america that believed they lived on a giants head, the forest was the hair... and when there was an earthquake they thought the giant was sneezing...
Completely clueless.

How can we trust those people..... and not look into what has been proven and documented by the worlds leading scientists all over the world.

Lets get away from belief for a second and talk about proof..

I suppose i need more proof for g-d.... because the proof and logical way of looking at it is leading me strongly to the other side.

I really havent explained it all... just the basics of why I'm starting to not believe...

I would love to hear some of your thoughts, and proofs, but whithout using any brainwashing or "manipulating" tactics...

I want facts... proof, real events that have happened... and what those events mean and why they are significant.

Also "stories", lies, andthousands of years of "chinese whispers" do not count either.... We need to talk facts or its very difficult to believe.

One thing that intrigues me is that Arno Penzias, the man who won the Nobel Prize for the Big Bang theory of the creation of the universe, is an observant Jew.

When properly studied the Torah becomes proof of science -- not the reverse. Great Jews through the centuries from the Ramban (Nachmanides) to Einstein (who granted was not religious) to Arno Penzias -- we have been blessed with learning more and more of the genius of HaShem.

The more one learns of Torah -- the more one learns of the universe - and it is amazing indeed!

Just because one doesn't believe in some piece of the package doesn't mean one has to throw out the whole package. I don't agree with Chabad on everything, but I think Chabad is still much better than most other systems/religions/cultures out there. I define God rather differently than most Orthodox Jews, I define God as the laws of nature, nothing more. But this doesn't contradict the Torah commandments as I understand them.

If you throw out the whole package, what are you left with? Modern culture is a moral disaster. I have traveled a lot and researched various religions. I only see 2 sane cultures in the world today, Orthodox Judaism and Japanese culture. So I hope decent people pick one of these 2 instead of allowing themselves to be morally dragged down by modern decadence.

How would that work? Maamad Har Sinai was a collective brain spasm? What law of nature causes us not to eat pork?
From a logical point of view perhaps one can believe that the laws of nature fulfill the roles we normally ascribe to God, but it's a giant leap from there to the "God of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov" whom we believe gave us the Torah, or even "the God of Aristotle."

wednesday, I can answer all of your questions if you really want me to. But my purpose in this thread isn't to debate with Chabad, but rather to show that one can start with a very different set of beliefs and still arrive at the conclusion that the Torah is worth following. I hope randomjewishguy doesn't give up on the Torah just because he believes in science.

wednesday, I can answer all of your questions if you really want me to. But my purpose in this thread isn't to debate with Chabad, but rather to show that one can start with a very different set of beliefs and still arrive at the conclusion that the Torah is worth following. I hope randomjewishguy doesn't give up on the Torah just because he believes in science.

It's OK. But yes, believing in science does not preclude believing in Torah.